Day wrote:
I've got some piccies on my site turboslug if any ones interested...

Taken with a Canon 50E, but just got a Konica Minolta Z2 but haven't had time to put those up yet or create the new summer style for the site.

I am completely taken aback by the 4th Florence photo, the one with the carabinieri (or rather: soldiers) sitting on the door step.

It looks exactly like the entrance to the house in Florence where I spent two weeks on holiday last year, and I mean exactly. Now of course there are probably a few hundred similar doorsin Florence, but still. You don't happen to remember the adress?

UncleLou wrote:
It looks exactly like the entrance to the house in Florence where I spent two weeks on holiday last year, and I mean exactly. Now of course there are probably a few hundred similar doorsin Florence, but still. You don't happen to remember the adress?

Cant remember the address but I was sat have a pizza outside a restaurant and to the right at the end of the street/square was a church called something like 'Spirito di Santo' Is that any help?

cyk, those are excellent shots! I'll take a look at them and return with some more feedback. Needless to say, some of them are quite inspiring. So inspiring I'm off to try a few things right now with my camera!

valli wrote:
cyk, those are excellent shots! I'll take a look at them and return with some more feedback. Needless to say, some of them are quite inspiring. So inspiring I'm off to try a few things right now with my camera!

Oh, and a web site note: for some reason the first page I see is the Sunsets folder, is it meant to be that way?

Also, the navigation is a bit odd, I missed a lot of shots before understanding what the "All Pages" link did. Maybe it's just me...

BTW, the experiment I did yesterday based on your illuminated still life shots was some self portraits in total darkness, long exposure (5-7") and illuminating my face using the display of my phone, sort of "washing" all over it. It turned out interesting, ghost-like but blurry because I was moving. Will try again with a tripod and a subject.

Yup real Infrared using a Hoya r72 Infrared filter on my 10D. They're then fixed in Photoshop to make them less red

Oh, and a web site note: for some reason the first page I see is the Sunsets folder, is it meant to be that way?

Yer, everytime I add new photos the main index page is updated with those new shots and has the category heading there too.

Also, the navigation is a bit odd, I missed a lot of shots before understanding what the "All Pages" link did. Maybe it's just me...

Ah nuts I've changed it now so it says "View all these photos". I didn't want to have 56k users to download 1mb's worth of images

BTW, the experiment I did yesterday based on your illuminated still life shots was some self portraits in total darkness, long exposure (5-7") and illuminating my face using the display of my phone, sort of "washing" all over it. It turned out interesting, ghost-like but blurry because I was moving. Will try again with a tripod and a subject.

Cool I've seen some really amazing shots using this style, and its great cos its pretty easy to do and its not overly used so you can produce really amazing shots with only a bit of thinking outside the box Can't wait to see what you come up with.

I started to hijack Otto's DSLR Camera thread with thoughts on a few of my photo's, so to avoid the wrath of Otto I'll post them here instead.

I needed a nice picture of a poppy for a coffin design (don't ask). The actual level of zoomable detail in the original full blown raw file is stunning -

Poppy - 1MB jpg.

I liked the way this bridge went off into the distance. Just wished it would have gone on forever or a blasted train would have gone over it - I did wait but got fed up.

Bridge - 1MB jpg

And I call this one "The one that got away". As mentioned on Otto's thread I forgot my bloody tripod. So picture the scene.... QE2 passes Liverpool's historic/famous waterfront in a near full moon. You've got a muppet with a camera he doesn't understand, trying to take a longish exposure when he is really guessing and without a tripod.
I do like the end picture but then it'll never happen again so I've bloody well got to. I just think what could have been in the hands of a seasoned photographer.
Too fuzzy, wrongly exposed but, (I think, so nerrrrr) good composition.

The composition of the QE2 shot is very nice, you're right. There isn't one focal point - you've got the ship, the moon, the reflection of the moon and various landmarks - but since it's such a wide shot I think a single focal point wouldn't work. The blurring isn't too bad if you zoom out to 10%. As for the exposure, I don't know what more you could have done for that. You could have forced the camera to over-expose it which might have brought out the sea better, and I don't think it would make the lights look too bad, but I'm not sure. Of course, you probably didn't have the option of upping the ISO in that light, and if you'd done a longer exposure the blurring would've been terrible, so I think that actually might be the best photo you could've got with that equipment.

The poppy, like you say has great detail and good colours, but I'm not convinced about the composition. There's a bit too much purple and blue crap in the background, and I might've looked for a more round specimen. It arguably looks better 90 degrees round, but then the framing is wrong.

The bridge though I like a lot. It just shows what cropping a shot can do. It's got a nice wide depth of field so you can't see the focal point. The way the bridge intersects with the trees at the end, and is masked at the bottom is really nice to look at. The details of the field are all present and correct, and the houses poking out don't spoil it too much. It's got that sense of past great industry, yet now it's deserted (like Ico).

I've just had the first roll of film from my SLR processed and scanned, and I can safely say that none of my pics came out that well.

The poppy was cropped to get rid of say approx 15% on both left/right sides for my first useage, and I must admit I did try to find a rounder one but in the setting of a motorway verge I gave up and took this as my best option. My final useage will probably require to cut-out just the poppy so I will then need a more round specimen.

The QE2 shot is too blury for my liking, and I don't think theres any need for it to be in black and white. A few of my QE2 shots

I would have also cropped the poppy to just around the poppy itself, to remove the pink thing on the left. Theres also quite a bit of noise in that shot. Also, you might want to think about resizing those images Photography isn't really about levels of zoom, its more about nice looking images, or at least it is for me

Hmm. How would you get a shot like that? It doesn't look like snow on the ground, so it must just be pale vegetation that's washed out. However, the stag looks underexposed, since in reality you should be able to see the top side of the stag (not just its silhouette) as the sun's clearly just above the frame. Or is there enough range of brightness (I forget the proper word) that you could actually get that picture without photoshopping? I suppose that if the filter was a bit pinky, it could turn green foliage to grey.

Well, on Monday I bought a 300D from Jacobs for £600. Once I get my £100 back from Canon then it'll be very nice!!!

Anyway, took it out for the first time today, here's some efforts...

All of these were taken today in Reddish Vale Country Park. I've cropped the images, and then used Adobe Elements 'Save for web...' function. Anyway, here goes! [link=http://www.scroatslair.com/images/rv1.jpg" target="_blank">An angry duck, some detail from a viaduct crossing the park and